JEROME CARDAN 103 



taste in music, an inheritance from his father, and was, 

 according to Cardan's showing, upright and honest in 

 his carriage, gifted with talents which must, under 

 happier circumstances, have placed him in the first rank 

 of men of learning, and in every respect a youth of the 

 fairest promise. The father records that he himself, 

 though well furnished by experience in the art of 

 medicine, was now and again worsted by his son in 

 disputation, and alludes in words of pathetic regret to 

 divers problems, too deep for his own powers of solution, 

 which Gian Battista would assuredly have mastered in 

 the course of time. He does not forget to notice certain 

 of the young man's failings ; for he remarks that he was 

 temperate of speech, except when he was angered, and 

 then he would pour forth such a torrent of words that 

 he scarce seemed in his right mind. Cardan professes 

 to have discerned a cause for these failings, and the 

 calamities flowing therefrom, in the fact that Gian 

 Battista had the third and fourth toes of his right foot 

 united by a membrane ; he declares that, if he had 

 known of this in time, he would have counteracted the 

 evil by dividing the toes. 1 Gian Battista eventually 

 gained the baccalaureat in his twenty-second year, and 

 two years after became a member of the College. 



The life which Cardan planned to lead at Pavia was 

 unquestionably a full one. He had several young men 

 under his care as pupils besides his son, amongst them 

 being a kinsman of his, Gasparo Cardano, a youth of 

 sterling virtue and a useful coadjutor in times to come. 

 He was at this time engaged on his most important 

 works in Medicine and Physical Science. He worked 

 hard at his profession, practising occasionally and read- 

 ing voraciously all books bearing on his studies. He 

 1 De Utilitate, p. 832. 



